Hello.  I am sending some pictures this time.  The first is of our Zone conference.  Urdaneta Zone and Pres. Jensen.  The next is me and Elder De Jesus, my trainee, and Elder Tolman, my trainer.  Elder Tolman is the Current Assistant to President Jensen. I put in a few pictures of Sister Villanueva's  baptism.  I also added a picture of a huge but friendly Pit Bull.  There is nothing in the picture to compare him to, but he is big, and he is only 1 year old.  That picture is mostly for mom.  That Pit Bull belongs to Lourdes Tabelin, BTW. 
     This was a good week, as you can see we had a Zone conference.  Actually it was a Tri-zone conference and it was Pres. Jensen's last conference.  He is leaving July 1 and Pres Monahan arrives.  It will be interesting, I don't know what that will be like.  I really love Pres. Jensen, but Pres. Jensen speaks highly of Pres. Monahan so it should be good.  We were told that Pres. Monahan will have a conference in his first week, and then the second week interview all the missionaries.  Pres. Jensen said in his closing remarks that what he wants for us more than anything else is to learn to always have the Spirit to be with us.  He gave amazing talks, but that is all I will say about them. 
      So this week we also had a Baptism.  That was great.  Elder De Jesus baptized Sister Villanueva.  Elder De Jesus was pretty excited as that was his first baptism on his mission.  Afterwards Sister Villanueva bore her testimony and mentioned that when she was baptized she really felt like Jesus loved her.  She also said that she had never quite felt like that before.  She has been baptized into other churches before but nothing compares to the feeling here.  She is such a great person. 
       This week we had some interesting experiences with some of our Less Active members.  First there was one name we had on our list that nobody knew.  The Ward Missionaries assigned to her are out of town so although we tried to find her, we didn't know how.  So one day we go to the house of an investigator (an interesting investigator here, because they come to church every week but run away when we go to her house).  She ran away, despite the fact she ran away earlier in the week yesterday she did indeed attend church, but since she ran away we decided to teach a less active nearby.  As we were talking before the lesson we found out she was the only member in her family, we also learned she had the same last name as the person on our focus list.  So I pulled out the list and asked if she knew this person, she responds "That's me."  The name on the list is not the name she uses, but it is her real name.  So we found her, in a round about way, and she did come to church yesterday.  We had another less active family come to church yesterday that hasn't come in years.  Years.  The members told us they wouldn't come back, well they did. And they brought with them a neighbor who is an investigator.  Missionary work goes on and will not be stopped.  We are focusing right now mostly on part member families.  As we find and teach less actives with investigator family members, they all start to progress in the Gospel.  We have quite a few part member families in our teaching pool right now.  A lot of people looking to come back. We are hoping and praying for them to return. 
                    Have a good week, keep your head up, and smile,
                             

                                          Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill